On Feb. 1 last year, the economic partnership agreement (EPA) between Japan and the European Union entered into force. Now, imported European food products like wine, pork and cheese have much lower, if not zero, tariffs.
This has had an almost immediate impact — last April, after the end of the fiscal year, imports of pork and cheese from the EU went up 47 and 57 percent, respectively. Cheese imports from members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP or TPP-11) have also increased.
Since 2014, cheese consumption in Japan has been increasing steadily, reaching an all-time high of 352,930 tons in 2018. Still, at around 2.8 kilograms per capita, the consumption rate of cheese in Japan is only a fraction of the amount eaten by Danes, Icelanders and Luxembourgers, Europe's top cheese consumers.